Perhaps you can imagine my rage when I saw this:
The terrific soldier-and-her-dog movie Megan Leavey, which had a theatrical release in the US last June, is going straight to VOD/DVD in the UK… and the film has been renamed Rex.
That’s right: the female protagonist has been erased, in the film’s UK marketing, in favor of the dog. The tagline on the DVD cover reads:
The true story of a Marine’s best friend.
Spoiler: This movie is NOT about the dog.
But let’s assume some marketing genius decided that animal movies are easier to sell than lady movies. In that case, there should be a honking big banner across this DVD cover that reads “From Gabriela Cowperthwaite, director of the BAFTA-nominated Blackfish.”
(Blackfish is her incredible documentary about captives orcas, which has raised awareness and radically changed the cultural conversation about the issue.)
I wonder why that’s not there…
After the enormous success of Wonder Woman, everyone was all, “Oh, hey, Hollywood won’t be able to pretend movies by and about women aren’t lucrative.” I’ve responded to that with, basically, “Let’s just wait and see.” And here we are.
DOGGIE! With incidental ladyperson, never mind about her.
I’m not sure which is worse: that people think this is a good way to market the film, or that they may be right.
ETA: that cover kind of makes it look like an action film. Maybe they think generic women won’t buy films about soldiers, so they have to sell it to the generic men who want a war film?
When people show up here and start arguing that the dog really is the main character, I’m going to have to start work on a new Bingo card.
It doesn’t get better in Germany – here the movie is called “Sergeant Rex – Nicht ohne meinen Hund” (Sergeant Rex – Not without my dog).
It’s atrocious (German translations of movie titles often are).
Alas, there’s one good side to this – your post here pointed me to this movie, and now I’ve gotta watch it.
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Watch megan leavey online streaminG’,
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